Niagara: A History of the Falls Read Online Free

to accompany La Salle on his travels. Nothing could have pleased him more.
    Hennepin was to be part of an advance company of sixteen under Dominique La Motte de Luciere charged with the task of setting up a fort and building a barque on Lake Erie. Travel was hazardous in those times. The company set off from Fort Frontenac in savage November weather aboard a ten-ton brigantine, tossed about fiercely in the mountainous waves. Hugging the shoreline for safety, the crew eventually managed to run the ship into the protection of a river mouth (probably the Humber) near the present site of Toronto. That night the river froze and the following morning the entire company was obliged to hack out a passage to the lake with axes.
    On December 6 they reached the mouth of the Niagara, which no ship had yet penetrated. It was too dark to enter, and so they stood out five miles from shore, trying to manage a little sleep in their cramped quarters. The following morning, December 7, they landed on the western (now the Canadian) bank at a small Seneca village. Here, the friendly Indians with a single fling of the net pulled in some three hundred small fish, all of which they gave to the newcomers, “ascribing their luck in fishing to the arrival of the great wooden canoe.”
    To the Indians, and indeed to the early explorers, the lower Niagara and the Falls above were little more than an impediment, forcing a long and weary portage over steep ridges. When Hennepin and several of the party paddled up the river, they found their way blocked by the current of the first of the great gorges through which the Niagara rushes. They were forced to abandon their craft and set off on snowshoes, toiling up the miniature mountain now known as Queenston Heights.
    Following the indistinct portage trail of the Indians, they could see, through a screen of trees, the columns of mist rising from the great cataract and hear the rumble of its waters. But they did not pause, for they were anxious to move beyond the Falls to locate a spot where La Salle could build his barque (to be called Griffon) . They camped that night at the mouth of Chippawa Creek (now the Weiland River), scraping away a foot of snow in order to build a fire. The next day, surprising herds of deer and flushing out flocks of wild turkeys, they retraced their steps and spent half a day gazing on Niagara’s natural wonders.
    Standing on the high bank above the cataract, they peered through a tangle of snow-covered evergreens and deciduous trees, naked and skeletal. They clambered down to the rim of the gorge for a better view, probably in the vicinity of Clifton Hill, a wintry forest then, a neon carnival today. And so Hennepin reached the very lip of the precipice.
    See him now on that chill December morning, shivering in his grey habit, staring down into “this most dreadful Gulph” and then averting his eyes because of the mesmerizing effect. “When one stands near the Fall and looks down,” he was to write, “…  one is seized with Horror, and the Head turns round, so that one cannot look long or steadfastly upon it.”
    The great cataract was farther downstream then. To Hennepin’s gaze, it formed an almost even line from bank to bank, curving gently from the cliffside of Goat Island to what is now the Canadian shore, its crestline only half its present length. On the far side he could see that the cataract between the river bank and Goat Island was broken into two parts, as it is today (the smaller being the Luna or Bridal Veil Falls), while close to the vast overhang of Table Rock on the near shore a fourth jet cascaded into the gorge (and, though he did not record it, there was probably a fifth). That one has long since vanished, as a result of the Falls’ implacable backward erosion.
    It is said that the priest, who carried a portable altar strapped to his back, went down on his knees to make an obeisance to his Deity, his ears assailed as if by Divine thunder. True or not, it